The last part of our trip saw us back where we began – London. Our trip back down south on the train wasn’t quite as civilized as the trip to Scotland. We happened to be travelling on the weekend of the English Football League finals – and it also just so happened that Newcastle was playing in the finals. Unfortunately for us, I had booked flex tickets for our train trip which meant that we did not have seats reserved for our 4.5hour train ride. And because the train was completely sold out and expected to be quite full, I could no longer get a seat reservation. Our choices were to chance it on the 10am train (our original planned departure time) OR get ourselves to the train station for first thing in the morning and hope that we were keen enough to beat the rush. We went with option B. The idea of attempting to squeeze ourselves and our luggage onto the train in a sea of football fans just did not seem like something I was prepared to do.
Thankfully for us, the decision paid off and we were able to walk through an empty station and on to an empty 7:30am train in Edinburgh. Things were very pleasant until we made our stop in Newcastle and a swarm of black and white clad football fans made their way on to the train. It quickly became very hectic – people were sitting in the luggage racks, on the floors and on our table (or at least resting themselves on it). Beers were cracked and chants began at 8:30. And of course, no trip with kids is complete without at least one person throwing up – the full train with half drunk Newcastle fans is when Mads decided to cross that part of the trip off the list. Once we made it to Kings Cross and off the train to the lively choruses of the fans, we hopped in a taxi and headed for our hotel. We got ourselves checked in and had a relaxing first afternoon and evening in the city.





We had saved a lot of the big ticket items for the end. London has no shortage of things to do and places to see so we had a fairly exciting final three days. The first day we headed across Westminster Bridge, got a good look at Big Bill (as Nora calls it), found the Abbey and made our way to Trafalgar Square where we ran into all our Newcastle friends. By now we were all cold and hungry enough to start looking for lunch.




We had tickets to see Matilda the Musical in the afternoon. Across the street from the theatre is the Seven Point Market. We grabbed some curry for lunch, some ice cream for dessert then settled in for the show.
Our seats were in the very back row of the theatre so while we didn’t have the best seats, we had the best time. The kids all rented binoculars, sang along, danced when they wanted and just thoroughly enjoyed all of it. I did too.










Day two was just as exciting as day one. Today though we traded in the live theatre for a behind the scenes look at Harry Potter. We had a lazy morning before boarding the bus to head out to Harry Potter world. We have already been to universal studios in Florida where they have a huge Harry Potter section so we had seen some of what they had to offer before but I was not prepared for the shear size of this place.
We spent almost 3 hours walking around and still didn’t see everything. We walked through the great hall, the forbidden forest, gringotts bank, diagon alley. We saw the hogwarts express, privet drive and just so many other Harry Potter secrets. All three of them were a bit mesmerized. It made for a pretty great afternoon.












